a lot of people after hurricane irene said they decided to stay put. what you see in the distance is a new york city bus that has been converted into a hurricane shelter transport. there's 72 hurricane shelters set up throughout new york city. so far at last check, there were only about 1,100 people staying inside of them. mandatory evacuations were in place for hurricane irene but that storm petered out. this, of course, expected to be much worse. so many people buying generators, water, extra food, deciding to stick it out. the problem with all of that is in the past four hours that we've been here, conditions have deteriorated quickly. so when people notice that something could really be wrong, they may not have a chance to get out safely. veronica. >> you can hear the wind picking up. tracie strahan of wnbc, thank you. >>> moments ago president obama canceled a campaign appearance in florida in order to get back to the white house sooner to monitor the storm. nbc's tracie potts has the latest for us from washington. tracie, what's going on? >> repo